6/29/09

Robbed

"Aw, man! You were robbed!" We yell that a lot around here, especially while playing Wii bowling when that one pin weaves from side to side but in the end remains standing, KWIM? Well, this isn't one of those type of posts. This is a we've-really-been-robbed kinda post. Not our home, thank goodness, but our van was broken into yesterday. We were eating out after church...the van was parked in a parking lot filled with tons of cars and was locked. Our valuables were not in plain view. We have a little basket in the floor between and passenger and driver seats and that's where we had left them. Doesn't matter, I guess.... Clearly *someone* was looking for something. It wasn't like you could just walk past our van and see anything valuable with a glance. And it happened in broad daylight! He/She/They smashed our passenger window and made off with my purse, a mini-laptop computer, and my iPod charger (but left the iPod and my cell phone which I had left on the dash!). I'm going to assume it's a "they" because they've filled up on a lot of gas with my cards! Before we were done eating, realized what happened, and could get my checkcard shut off, they had emptied our account ~ we have a balance of $1.38, no joke! They spent over $50 at 2 gas stations and it also appears they filled up their gas tanks in addition to the whatever they bought at the stations but we don't know the $ amounts. I had a BP credit card but they didn't get to it before we got it closed down....I also had a 2nd checkcard in there that was attached to a joint account I held with my Mom in S. C. Unfortunately, we were unable to get it closed down until this morning and that was too late. Balance of only $7.80 in there but they put that account in the negative for nearly $150. It is shut down now, too. They also made off with my drivers license, all of the kids social security numbers, a Cracker Barrel giftcard, my checkbook, and our WIC folder. WIC will replace my I. D. card but won't replace any of our coupons which were for milk, cheese, juice, eggs, cereal, peanut butter, or formula for Lydia. In September, we qualify for new coupons. I've called and we're in the process of getting our van window fixed (thankfully, deductible free!). The laptop (which we were buying from a friend so it technically isn't even ours yet) was worth about $300. The thieves have no way of charging it and it wasn't fully functioning anyway (Jonathan was working on it) so it won't do them much good. No idea yet if our homeowner's insurance will cover that our not....As for the money losses, we're in the process of filing disputes for these charges but it can take up to 90 days to get our money back and there's not even a guarantee we will get the money back. And there's still a possibility they can get more money off of us...there's only 1 way and I'm not going to give that information away on here. Wouldn't want to give anyone any ideas. *wink* We can choose to close our account altogether but we'd rather not right now because of our direct deposits/automatic withdraws attached to the account. We're just praying that the thieves aren't smart enough to figure out how to get to more money. But if they do figure it out, we'll have no choice but to close the account. But, for now, if they can find an employee stupid enough, they could even get in the zoo with my membership card. The zoo always asks for an ID with the card ~ and the thieves have my ID ~ but do they look at the picture??? And after that, I guess they can treat themselves to a nice dinner at the Barrel. *sigh* Must get on with making phone calls....please pray for us!